For Republican pols, no place like home

Just saw a report that the Republican lunatics in the U.S. House are planning to go home without voting on any Fiscal Cliff deal passed by the Senate, thereby guaranteeing  most Americans  an unhappy New Year.  I want my country back.  

How Renacci links Newtown and 9/11

We shouldn't let the year end without recalling the voice of Rep. Jim Renacci, Wadsworth, Oh., Republican, who found a way to join gun control, which he opposes, with  9/11.  Although the logic leaps, it at least shows you the evasive ways  of the pro-gun politicians who object to  the calls for even modest controls following the Newtown tragedy while pretending to be responsibly thoughtful about the issue.

In a statement reported by the Beacon Journal, Renacci argued that although 9/11 was carried out by religious extremists, there was no outcry to "erase our First Amendment right to free exercise of religion".  Funny that no one thought about it that way at the time.

You can see where this is going.

The same Constitutional standard, he says, should be applied to the Second Amendment. In other words, don't tinker with  the right to bear arms.  Rather, he opines,  the nation's collective  mental health should be the No. 1 priority because the massacres of  9/11 and Newtown's kids were carried out  by "madmen,  not by our Founding Fathers  or our Constitution."

The comparison was invidious, but we're getting used to such high-minded obscurities by the Renaccis  on Capitol Hill.

When friends meet to ring in the new...

The guy on the left was a Christmas gift from a 47 percenter;  the one on the right was a gift at an Akron Aeros baseball game. President Obama and Akron Mayor Plusquellic, both of whom are ending  the year as winners.  It was only fitting that they should be together  in this photo-op. Nancy also has a bobblehead of Omar Vizquel, a winner, too.  But for this historic photo,  three would be a crowd.

Mitt's painful role as the reluctant dragon to save America

As if Republicans aren't  suffering enough blowback from their whining ever since they lost the election, Tagg Romney has  set more tongues a-wagging by declaring that his dad never really wanted to be president anyway. So there!

Even the overseas media are quoting him these days.  The Daily Mail of London, for example, screamed:  "Tagg Romney makes shocking revelation".   Some Brits complained that Mitt had only succeeded in wasting a lot of conservatives' time.

Shocking?  Well, yes and no.  Tagg, after all, is the same son who once declared that he felt like punching President Obama during the course of the presidential debate with Dad Mitt. As the hostile action of some conservatives goes, that remark was good enough to downgrade the fury of Rick Santorum's disclosure that a speech by President Kennedy made him want to puke.

For anyone caught up in holiday shopping or gift returns,  the critical secret revealed by Tagg went like this:

"He (Papa) wanted to be president less than anyone I've met in my life.  He had no desire to...run.  If he could have found someone else to take his place...he would have been ecstatic to step aside.  He is a very private person who loves his family deeply and wants to be with them, but he has deep faith in God and he loves his  country, but he doesn't love the attention."

"Yeah, right," declared blogger Daily Kos, which further noted that Mitt Romney was "preparing  to run for President of the United States even before he took the oath of office as Governor of Massachusetts 10 years  ago."

Tagg  blames himself and Mom Ann for pressing Mitt onto the painful martyr's  path to save the country from the Obama menace.  And as far as Mitt's failure to find  "someone else to take his place"  there was a phalanx of eager others on the GOP  debate stage who would have gladly accommodated  his hunger for privacy.

NOTE:  Grumpy's column  on the state of today's  newspapers is posted on Plunderbund.






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Stop misnaming Republican Lincoln Day dinners

While viewing Steven Spielberg's compelling film, "Lincoln",  I couldn't avoid  thinking of the wide gulf between the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln's age and the impostors that have kidnapped the GOP of today. In the 1860s, Republicans were the good guys who supported their president's efforts to preserve the Union and free the slaves.  Lincoln had little hope that he would be reelected.   The Democrats were the bad guys clinging to slavery while engaged in a war of secession.

But in a dramatic reversal of roles,  the capture of the Republican Party by the Tea Partyers and their wealthy enablers has openly abused the Lincoln of wisdom, courage and patriotism (so sensitively  revealed by Daniel Day-Lewis).  There is still silly talk of secession within wacko groups.
And few will deny that racism kept Barack Obama's victory closer than it might have been.  For confirmation, simply check the figures of white-guy voters.

In February, or a little later,  Republicans will stage their traditional Lincoln Day Dinners, often showing preference for right-wing GOP speakers.   The trend by the Summit County GOP, for example,  has featured   such conservative icons  as Mike Huckabee (whom, it says in the invitation, is a "leading favorite to top"  the 2012 presidential ticket;  Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the party's very very conservative Study Committee;  and Rick Santorum, who needs no further introduction.  I have occasionally referred to these misnamed "Lincoln" events as identity  thefts.

 Although I don't expect happier results, may I suggest that now that they have lost the election, the  sponsors of these political stage shows find a new name for the dinners .  The  Norquist Day Dinner?  The LaPierre Day Dinner?  At least this would be a more honest approach and not slander Lincoln in his grave.

The Dispatch endorses Kasich for reelection!

The Columbus Dispatch, the bellwether of conservative chatter in Upper Arlington and other spiffy  Republican enclaves, sent a Happy New Year greeting  to Gov. Kasich on Sunday that could easily pass for an endorsement for  the guv's reelection campaign of 2014.

You might ask, "What's the hurry?" Well, in the Dispatch's case, it's never too early to safely  ferry home its politician of choice in a major editorial -  long before anybody even knows the name of his eventual Democratic opponent.

Actually the paper's  enthusiasm for Kasich,  the fellow it endorsed the last time, covered so many positives that we can only conclude that it would take the Wright Brothers to invent any new ones that would rise to greater heights.   Rather than wade through a series of exclamatory compliments in the Dispatch's stargazing passages, you  can quickly get the point in the opening paragraph:

"For Ohio and the governor, 2012 has been a transformative year.  John Kasich sped through his second year with his trademark zeal for getting done the big and difficult things, hardly skipping a beat after  his 2011  reforms stabilized the state."

Also,

"The man who once balanced the federal budget, line by line, took a scalpel to the Buckeye spending plan and erased the deficit without raising taxes.  He launched reforms of Medicaid, prisons and job-killing red tape."

It goes on with goose-bumping accolades for Kasich's  education reforms and initiatives for roadbuilding, job growth and balanced budget.

On that last point it was never mentioned the teeniest that part of the balancing act was the  convenience of stripping the school budget by more than $1 billion and, reports  Plunderbund, cutting 50 pct. of the local government fund in his 2013 budget. Public school cuts in teaching staffs, and local school tax levies,  have become commonplace.

Finally, the greatest excision from the governor's  fanfare for his jobs record is acknowledgement of any credit to a growing  national economy and the Obama administration's revival of the auto industry that saved  saved thousands of jobs in Ohio.

The Dispatch did concede  that none of the governor's good deeds rank as highly as the fact that his "most critical accomplishment...rests in the hearts of the many Ohioans who again have hope"  that happier days are here again.

Is it gross to mention that the Dispatch also endorsed George W. Bush and Mitt Romney?

LaPierre, worse than a bad hair day

Wayne LaPierre, the voice-over for the National Rifle Association, may consider himself an expert on guns,  but he appears to have shot himself in both feet with his news conference that called from armed officers  in every school in America.

Not even the New York Post, owned by world conservative Rupert Murdoch, was comforted by what the NRA had billed as as a "meaningful" solution to such massacres as the  one in Newtown.
The pictured front page speaks for itself.

Bolton prepares to head off Hillary at the pass

Dashing all fear that the world would vanish on Friday,  far-sighted Republicans have locked on to a new  calamitous challenge  to them  that could occur  four years from now:  A presidential candidacy by Hillary Rodham Clinton.

With all of the media chatter that Hillary is da first lady-to-be of Democrats, the GOP's ever-vigilant Hard Right is already gathering its battered  forces to deny her of any hope of leading a parade that she has yet to say she would do anyway.

One of the party's leading gorillas,  John Bolton, has thrown down the gauntlet by accusing her of faking a concussion to avoid an appearance before a senate committee probing the Benghazi attack. (He doesn't really know that to be true,  but you can see how this goes..)

You must understand that with guys like Bolton, the former UN ambassador appointed by Condoleezza Rice,  there's never room for professional  courtesies in sickness and in health.   He's a long-time cold warrior, militaristic poker player, Fox News favorite,  and gadabout in conservative think tanks.  He is obviously now the point man in his assault on Clinton to spare the world of another Mayan assumed catastrophe.

 Frankly, it sounds like the GOP is recycling the immodest words  of Sen. Mitch McConnell on Day One of Barack Obama's first presidency that his first duty was to make Obama a one-term president. (We all know how that worked out!)  May we  now assume that  the GOP's most noble vow will be to make Hillary a no-term non-president?

With Scott, GOP ship of state sails on...

If you happened to read beyond the first paragraph the reports on South Carolina Rep. Tim Scott's appointment to the U.S. Senate, you will learn that (1) he is the first black Republican to serve in that role from the south since 1881 and (2) he is virtually a political clone of retiring conservative Tea Party Sen.  Jim DeMint.

Not only that, we are informed by the New York Times that Scott "first earned his Republican credentials by serving  as a campaign co-chairman  in 1996 for Sen. Strom Thurmond, a onetime segregationist, in his final campaign."

With the defeat of Rep. Allen West of Florida in the November, and the departure of Scott, the GOP House will be without a single black.  But Republicans will now have a single African-American in the Senate.

We can only add that for Republicans, who were wiped out by black voters in November,  it's a start.

And now, the Louie Gohmert awards of 2012

 

For the past year, I've been building a file  dedicated to  Rep.  Louie Gohmert.  A Texas Republican, he's the congressman least likely to be considered for a Rhodes scholarship.  Not even an invitation to appear on Jeopardy, if you know what I mean.

The file is bulging with tributes to odd and quirky antics and quotes - many of them not elegantly stated, as Mitt would say -  that littered the 2012 political landscape. Shall we begin with the honors?

Most useless right-to-work stunt in the 2012 presidential campaign:  To Paul Ryan, for washing pans that had already been washed in  a soup kitchen run by the St. Vincent De Paul Society during a stop near Youngstown.

Most forgettable  moment in the Republican debates: To Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who  conceded that he could  only remember two of three U.S.  departments he would abolish if he were elected president.

Most stupendous  medical malpractice by pro-life white guys:  The award goes to three  Republican non-physicians:  Rep. Todd Akin, who said a female body would prevent pregnancy from "legitimate rape";  Indiana treasurer Richard Mourdock,  who allowed that pregnancy from rape was God's will; and Foster Friess, a major contributor to Rick Santorum's campaign, who said that in his day, one way to avoid pregnancy was for the ''gals  to put an aspirin  between their knees".

Most spaced-out comment of  the year:  Candidate Newt Gingrich, promising a permanent base station on the moon in his second term in the Oval Office.

Most prolonged ego-trip by a pain-in-the you-know-what birther:  Donald Trump, who was left running in place at the starting gate.

Most detached flag-raiser by a state official:  Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted's deepest concern that  restoring early voting was "un-American".

Most insightful political reprieve of the downside of Mitt Romney's wealth:  House Speaker John Boehner's conclusion that Americans  are supportive of rich folks and would vote for Mitt because "they don't want to vote for someone that hasn't been successful."

Most cognitive dissonant statement of the presidential campaign:  Mitt Romney's repeated contention that "the economy is getting it better but Obama made it worse."

Most  in urgent need of a hearing aid in  House of Representatives: Soon- to- exit Rep. Allen West of Florida,  who said he "heard" that there were 80 Communists posing as Democrats in the House.

Most errant description of the Republican comeback team: Michelle Bachmann, describing Romney and Ryan as a "brilliant combination" to carry the GOP banner.

Most ignored warning from a GOP conservative:  Rick Santorum,who described Mitt Romney  as the "worst" possible candidate to get the Republican nomination.

Most Houdini-like escape from his party's exile:   George W. Bush, last mentioned when he flew off to  the Cayman Islands to give a talk on investments.

Most audacious definition of "fair and reasonable":   Doug Preisse, Franklin County GOP chairman, who asserted: "I guess I really actually feel we shouldn't contort the voting process to accommodate the urban - read African-American - voter-turnout machine. Let's be fair and reasonable."

Most descriptive profile of a Republican candidate:  Summit County GOP chairman Alex Arshinkoff, describing  Josh Mandel as a "Jew with balls".

Most chilling statement by a GOP official about an apparent zombie attack:  Maine Republican Chairman Charlie Webster, who said he was astounded by the "dozens,  dozens of black people who voted"  because he personally did not know anyone in town who "knows a black person."   He said he didn't know how that  happened but promised to find out.

And finally, there's ol' Louie Gohmert himself, a right-wing Lone Star  gun-loving operative who  believes that the only solution to gun massacres is to arm all school faculties.  In the wake of the unspeakable Newtown shootings, Louie said if only a fatally wounded teacher had had a gun in her desk, she could have blown off  the head of the shooter.

Or maybe not.


















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